


saputra

by toujours_nigel



Category: Mahabharata - Vyasa
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-30
Updated: 2019-04-30
Packaged: 2020-02-10 09:47:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18657952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toujours_nigel/pseuds/toujours_nigel
Summary: Srutakarma is tiny in his arms, perfect and vulnerable. Arjuna wishes he had had time to learn of fatherhood from his own father, long before he became one himself.





	saputra

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Golden_Daughter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Golden_Daughter/gifts).



He holds Srutakarma in his arms the first time and realises he has no notion of how to be a father. He left Indraprastha before Draupadi bore sons for his brothers, and even little Shrutasena is seven now and knows the name of every star in the sky and the stories of the feats of gods they commemorate; Prativindhya is a solemn twelve, very like his father save in his booming laughs. The only father he may call his own is Pitamaha Bhishma, in whose lap he fell at eleven, fatherless and longing, and he cannot take an infant swimming, hunting, driving till the horses tire and the tears dry up.

He remembers King Pandu well enough, his placid temper and the smiles that crinkled his eyes closed and the strong arms that cradled his sons and the sure grip that tossed them and the patience with which he set about teaching them to become _kshatriyas_ worth the name. He remembers gathering herbs at frosty dawn, and stories heard drowsing before a roaring fire, but not the trick of how to tell them. At four and seven and ten, he had simply soaked up his father’s abundant love and attention, grown thundercloud-great on a surfeit of affection. At eleven the storm had burst.

Since then it has been his mother’s hand firm on the reins of their many-horsed chariot, and all that is best in him he can trace to her quiet influence. He judges people well because she tore every new acquaintance to analytic pieces in the tenuous safety of their chambers in Hastinapuri. He keeps his temper because he watched her smile through pain and insult. He is the best of archers because he was taught by the best _astraguru_ , but the resilience that kept him practising into the dead hours of night he learnt from her. These are skills he knows how to impart, because he was desperate after his father’s death to learn them as skills, and because his mother taught him, as she taught Bhima how to cook, Sahadeva how to use his wit sparingly.

“He is perfect,” he tells Draupadi, when the silence has stretched too long. “I am the happiest of men today.”

“You are the most fearful of men,” she answers. “You won’t drop him, you have a surer grip than your youngest brother.”

“I practised on them, when I was three and he was nearly one. I held Sahadeva and Bhima held Nakula; their heads were firm enough and Father hovered between us like an anxious hen. He taught us how to hold them. It is the one thing he taught me about children. Panchali,” he says, stricken, shamed, “I could be a mother to our son far easier than a father, for I know nothing of it.”

Draupadi laughs. “If your brothers are any standard, you will fare well enough. A father’s tasks are not so different from those of a mother, an uncle, a teacher. Yet I do know from whence your worry springs. Our mother died when we were four; a tiger took her unawares. When we were sixteen our father’s queen took us as her own and bid us call her mother, but too many springs had flowered.”

“I will undertake motherhood,” he tells her, smiling lest the tears come, “if only you will stand as his father instead.”


End file.
